Effects of Cooperative, Competitive, and Individualistic Conditions on Children’s Problem-solving Performance

Abstract

The effects of interpersonal cooperation, competition, and individualistic efforts were compared on a categorization and retrieval, a spatial-reasoning, and a verbal problem-solving task. Forty-five first-grade children were randomly assigned to conditions stratified on the basis of sex and ability, so that an approximately equal percentage of males and females and high, medium, and low ability children were included in each condition. The results indicate that on all three tasks students in the cooperative condition achieved higher than did those in the individualistic condition, and on two of the three tasks students in the cooperative condition achieved higher than did those in the competitive condition. There were no significant differences between the competitive and individualistic condition. Students in the cooperative condition used higher quality strategies on the three tasks than did those in the other two conditions, and they perceived higher levels of peer support and encouragement for learning. High ability students in the cooperative condition generally achieved higher than did the high ability students in the competitive and individualistic conditions.